Bridging the gap between mental availability and momentum in B2B

In B2B, complex buying decisions are rarely made on impulse. Yet, many marketing programs still focus almost exclusively on capturing short-term demand — a costly mistake. To build lasting momentum and drive future growth, you need a strategy that connects mental availability to buying triggers. A continuum approach does just that.

Marketing beyond the 5%: Reaching buyers across the entire journey

Buying cycles for complex solutions are lengthy, ranging from nine months to several years. They also tend to be longer-term purchases due to the heavy lifting and the disruption of switching. For example, you don’t replace your CRM very often.

This longer-term situation is one of the reasons for the recent focus on the 95/5 rule, which suggests that only 5% of your buyers are in the market at one time. B2B marketing strategies focused on only short-term demand capture programs sacrifice priming the 95% of the market for future buying situations.

One of the detrimental shifts in B2B marketing brought on by marketing technology and the growth-at-all costs mentality over the last decade is that we adopted a feeling of control over buyers. We failed to see the lie and took the bait for the promise of a way to tangibly measure marketing results in the short term, focused on revenue. 

Ignoring the messy, complex journey that is difficult to measure allowed marketers to offer proof of ROI on marketing spend. But in the process, it downgraded the importance of brand and the need to build mental availability with prospects not currently in the market to buy.

I see discussions all the time focusing on either mental availability and branding or demand generation for performance marketing, as if they’re two separate things. But they’re not. Why? 

Because you have no idea when that 5% of in-market buyers will shift. Your buyers can experience a trigger event or uncover a priority use case at any moment. Buyers who were in-market may shift out of the market for a variety of reasons.

The question is, will buyers think of your brand in relation to a situation or when they experience a trigger event? If not, they won’t invite you into the buying conversation.

Dig deeper: The problem with B2B marketing: Misaligned measurement is stifling innovation

A continuum approach serves in-market and future buyers

A continuum approach differs significantly from a traditional campaign (which is explored further in my book “Digital Relevance”). Creating a continuum starts with personas that help marketers push their understanding of target markets to an extreme. This matters because a continuum doesn’t have an endpoint — it continues across the entire customer lifecycle, focusing on achieving relevant goals at each stage.

With a campaign, you’re working toward a fixed objective within a set timeframe. With a continuum, you’re managing multiple goals throughout the customer journey, with the flexibility to adjust and refine your efforts as new insights and buyer knowledge emerge. Rather than starting over with each campaign launch, you’re in a state of ongoing improvement — building and evolving the same wheel instead of constantly reinventing it.

Most B2B marketing programs start too late. They focus on the trigger event that puts buyers in-market. That set period of duration for a campaign doesn’t extend to the depth needed for a complex purchase controlled by buyers. And it fails to connect the dots between category entry points (CEPs) and buying triggers. Instead, it counts on trying to push buyers into buying on your timeline, not theirs. If you’re on the shortlist, this may work. If you’re not, it’s an uphill and often unwinnable battle.

With a continuum approach, you aim earlier to engage potential buyers while they’re still in status quo to build mental availability. With a continuous effort to connect the dots between CEPs, problems, triggers and your brand, you can build momentum with buyers who become in-market and those who will enter the market in the future. 

Dig deeper: 7 steps to creating an audience-based B2B marketing plan

Adopting a continuum framework to reduce buyer effort

The framework below illustrates how to structure messaging across the buyer journey, connecting early-stage awareness with deeper consideration and validation.

Here’s a narrative example that crosses the continuum:

CEP 

• “We need to unite business and IT to speed time to market to stay competitive.” (Focus on expertise and brand POV related to the category.)

Problem

• “How do we generate buy-in and help executives and employees embrace a path toward productive change to achieve this business initiative?” (Focus on expertise and brand POV related to the category.)

About us

• “Our approach helps both business and IT roles see the value for their departments and simplifies what it takes to embrace change collectively.” (Now you can introduce your product.)

What to know

• “Here’s how you enable your middle managers to drive change and why you need them to create enterprise-wide adoption to strengthen competitive advantage.”

Will it work?

• “Take a look at how ABC company transformed from departmental silos to enterprise-wide collaboration to speed time to market, growing revenue by 57% in two years.”

A continuum framework is easier to map out when you approach it as a narrative storyline. This allows you to see how the dots connect to build the story — and momentum — across the buying process. A storyline also makes it much easier to engage your buyers over time.

The example above is truncated. The actual client program consisted of four CEPs with multiple approaches for the other stages that strengthened the storyline.

The more CEP links buyers have, the higher the probability of buying, research from Ehrenberg-Bass found. The client executed this approach as a vertical ABM 1:few program, adding $5 million to the pipeline in just eight months.

Note: To address expansion and retention, apply a continuum framework based on your customers’ new status quo and related CEPs once they’ve solved the original problem that had them become your customer.

Building voluntary buyer momentum is the key 

Continuum programs built on buyer-focused thought leadership tend to be evergreen. You can update content assets for market changes and reuse them for multiple years, remaining relevant.

Engagement data also lets you understand which topics are relevant to specific buyers. This insight informs a sales enablement program that helps your sales reps have more powerful, buyer-focused conversations. 

Waiting to talk about your product until buyers are in-market means you’ve earned their attention voluntarily based on your brand’s POV and expertise. You’ve become a resource they trust through relevance, applicable information and insights they can use even before they become your customer.

Up to 63% of executives are looking for insights applicable over the next 3–12 months, the ITSMA Value of Thought Leadership 2025 report found. As such, a continuum approach has merit for building momentum. 

It’s important to recognize that:

• 59% of executives say they’ve seen nearly identical content from different providers.
• 57% struggle to differentiate one provider’s thought leadership from another’s. 

To stand out, your approach must be human, provocative and willing to challenge the status quo — exactly what 74% of executives are looking for.

Dig deeper: How to build a better buyer journey using customer behavioral data